Dated at approximately 1540, this map, a Mexican pictorial document with writing in Spanish and Nahuatl, relates to a lawsuit concerning the estate of Don Carlos Ometochtli Chichimecatecotl, an Aztec lord and one of the many sons of Nezahualpilli, ruler of Texcoco. Don Carlos was charged with heresy and publicly executed by the Spanish authorities on November 30, 1539. Litigation began on December 31, 1540, when a man identified as Pedro de Vergara petitioned the Inquisition to return to him certain fruit trees taken from the property of Don Carlos ...

Giovan Battista Belluzzi (1506–54) was a San Marino native who served as chief military engineer to Cosimo I de' Medici (1519–74), duke of Florence. This manuscript, believed to be in Belluzzi’s own hand, was written for Stefano IV Colonna, a Florentine general also in the employment of the Medici family. The manuscript contains instructions for building military fortifications in remote areas, using only local resources such as earth and wood as structural elements. The text includes a discourse on how to evaluate the condition of the soil ...

The renowned Nestorian Persian physician Yūḥannā Ibn Māsawayh (circa 777–857), known in the Latin West as Mesue, was born in Samarra, present-day Iraq. According to al-Qiftī, Yūḥannā’s father, Abu Yūḥannā Māsawayh, a physician at the famed medical center at Jundīshāpūr (in southwest Persia, near present-day Dezful), was asked to establish a hospital in Baghdad during the reign of Caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (ruled 786–809). Ibn Māsawayh continued the work of his father in Baghdad, teaching medicine, composing medical works, and treating patients. Ibn Māsawayh began his career at ...

This work is a treatise on the construction and use of the weighing balance (qabān, also qapān). It brings together geometric, mechanical, and arithmetic knowledge needed to construct and utilize measuring devices for weighing heavy and irregularly-shaped objects. The author’s name is unknown, but excerpts from another work by an already-deceased Shaykh ‘Abd al-Majīd al-Shāmulī al-Maḥallī are quoted in the treatise. The last page of the manuscript contains a sheet of verses that describe the basics of using a weighing balance, in a form that is easy to remember ...

In the late 15th and first half of the 16th centuries, the cultivation, refining, and marketing of sugar became a major part of the expanding economy of the Canary Islands. The main drivers of the sugar economy were landowners, agents, and traders from Flanders, which at that time was part of the Spanish Empire. Antwerp became the great receiving and distributing center for Canary Island sugar in Europe. One result of this economic activity was the introduction of Flemish art into the Canaries. Art became a means by which the ...

Among the many endeavors undertaken by Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (1459–1519) to further his legacy was his plan of a monumental allegorical triumph, to be composed of more than 200 woodcuts. Many of the foremost artisans of the time worked on the project, but it was stopped after the Emperor's death and thus was never finished. The Munich manuscript of the Turnierbuch (Tournament book, also known as The Triumphs of Maximilian) features copies of the preparatory drawings made by Hans Burgkmair the Elder (1473–1531), who was ...

In the mid-16th century, tradesmen working for the Fugger mercantile and banking empire and commissioned by the Augsburg patrician and book lover Johann Jakob Fugger were busy acquiring new treasures, from sources near and far, for Fugger’s huge collection of books. To enlarge his collection of European dynastic history and heraldry, a special interest of Fugger’s in 1545–50, he procured this work, the latest version of the armorial of the English nobility. The collection opens with a magnificent coat of arms of King Henry VIII (reigned 1509 ...